28 heading of beating the obvious over the head with a stick. In a variety of pre- dictable ways, the classes are more satis- fied than the masses. The élites are hap- pier with their careers and feel more optimistic about the future. At all levels, people believe they are working harder than their parents did to achieve the same standard of living, and predict that their children will eventually feel the same wa And so on. We went for the obvious stuff, of course, if only to anchor our survey in the existing literature of polling. But we also tried to formulate offbeat questions- questions designed to refract opinion through unconventional prisms, to get at under lying feelings indirectly, and to induce people to let down their guard a bit. Some surprises ensued. OMIGOD C ONSIDER, for example, religion. One of the staples of survey- research lore is that Americans are an extraordinarily religious people. In the United States, the question "Do you believe in God?" routinely turns up "yes" majorities in the nineties, which is substantially higher than the "yes" re- sponse to similar questions in European countries. True to form, 92 per cent of our Main Street respondents answered "yes" to the God question, and only 3 per cent said "no." Close to 90 per cent of Easy Street said "yes," too. And more than 70 per cent of both groups answered "yes" to the question "Do you consider yourself a religious person?" High Street was another story: its New Yorker-reading inhabitants are split fifty-fifty between religious and nonreli- gious people. And "only" 61 per cent say they believe in God, while 21 per cent say they don't. (One can be fairly certain, by the way; that all those "yes" es are un- equivocal, because the Narcissus Survey offered two other choices beyond "yes" and "no"; to wit, "Yes, if God is defined in a certain way" and "I'm agnostic." These mugwump alternatives pulled only a point or two each on Main and Easy Streets, and a combined total of 13 per cent on High Street.) How one interprets numbers like these is likely to be heavily influenced by the ideological procliviti s one brings to the exercise. For example, here's one way to spin the belief-in-God findings: despite all the talk about a cultural élite out of touch with Middle America, the Narcissus Survey shows that an over- whelming majority of that so-called élite affirms its faith in God. Here's another: despite the cultural élite's desperate ef- forts to ingratiate itself with the main- stream, the NarcIssus Survey shows that a member of that élite is fully seven times as likely to be an atheist as is an average, real American. In an attempt to dig a bit beneath the spiritual surface, the Narcissus Surveyof- fered respondents three choices and asked them to say which of them most closely corresponded to their ideas about God. Main A supreme being 47 who sometimes intervenes in human affairs Easy 41 High 24 The force that 22 27 22 created the universe and its laws, but does not intervene in the working of that creation The name people 20 give to the sacred spirit within each person 21 38 Don't know/not sure 11 10 16 No doubt, some readers will be sur- prised at how many people embrace the notion of an intervening, "personal" God, while others will be surprised at how many do not. It's safe to say; though, that the two great streams of religious feel- ing that were present at the republic's cre- ation-theism, which is the belief in the prayer-answering God of history and of daily life (a belief shared by nearly all the formal denominations), and deism, which is the belief in a more or less im- personal, noninterfering, abstract spirit or Creator (a belief shared by many peo- ple both churched and unchurched, and by many of the country's founders)-still flow strongl Indeed, the replies to a related pair of qu stions hint at a deep division just beneath the surface of the country's broad religious consensus. When the three groups were asked "Do you believe that your religion is 'true' in a way that other religions and spiritual traditions are not?," Main Street said "yes" nearly twice as of- ten as Easy Street and more than three times as often as High Street. Those who answered "yes" were then asked, "Would you describe other religions as being false?" Nearly half the Main THE NEW YORKER, JANUARY 5, 1998 Streeters said "yes" again, as against only a third of the Easy Streeters and none- zero per cent-of the High Streeters Main Street, it appears, is either more serious or less tolerant about religion than are the éhtes. MONEY MONEY MONEY T HE Narcissus Survey also asked a series of questions about wealth and income in American society-ques- tions aimed at getting people to spec- ify what they think constitutes being " . h "" I " " . ddl I " fIC, upper c ass, upper ml e c ass, " ki I " d " " d h wor ng c ass, an poor, an t en getting them to estimate how much of the population falls into those categor- ies. The goal was to form an idea of what sort of America exists in peo- ple's imaginations, and then to see how closely it resembles the real thing. The survey shows that Americans greatly overestimate the number of peo- ple at both ends of the econom Main Street thinks that a third of the popula- tion lives in poverty, while both Easy Street and High Street think the num- ber is closer to a quarter. However, according to the Census Bureau, the real figure is only around 14 per cent. Percep- tIons of wealth are equally skewed. Both Main Street and High Street think, on average, that if you have a personal net worth of around $2 million you're rich, and that some 10 per cent of American households fall into that catego Easy Street thinks that it takes around $3 mil- lion, and that 6 per cent of the country's households are rich by that definition. But according to S.R.I. Consulting, a subsidiary of S.R.I. International (for- merly known as the Stanford Research Institute), only 1.2 per cent of American households are worth more than $2 mil- lion (never mind individuals, and never mind those worth more than $3 million). Similarly, Main Street guesses that a household income of $105,000 a year makes a family upper middle class, that $206,000 makes it upper class, and that fully a quarter of American house- holds fall into each of these categories. High Street thinks it takes $135,000 to make a family upper middle class and $338,000 to elevate it to upper class, and puts 21 per cent and 15 percent of American households into these re- spective categories. Easy Street has a more modest idea of upper middle class